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We’ll know for sure in a few days, but right now the smart money
says that Republicans will regain control of the House in next
week’s election, but fall just short of getting the Senate as
well. Given that Democrats will still control the presidency,
what sorts of things can we expect to see in January and over the
next two years in terms of policy?

There is, obviously, a strong temptation to simply draw a
parallel to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, halfway
through Bill Clinton’s first term. But there are important
reasons why the consequences will be quite different this time.

For starters, in 1994 there wasn’t a single Republican in the
House who had served during the last time the GOP had control in
1953 and 1954. There was a lot that Republicans had to learn
about being in the majority. Today, of course, there are many
Republicans who were in the majority as recently as 2006, and are
ready to seize power.

Another difference is that the House Republican leader in 1994,
Newt Gingrich, had vastly more power over his caucus than his
counterpart today, John Boehner, is likely to have. The reason is
that every Republican owed Gingrich very heavily for
achieving majority status, something many probably never expected
to live to see. Therefore, as Speaker, he could get away with
doing things and impose discipline in a way that Boehner cannot
hope to duplicate. The Republican caucus that will take office in
January will be vastly more independent and less willing to
blindly follow orders than the one that took office in 1995.

Gingrich was able to command the support of rank–and-file
Republicans because of his brilliant strategy that gave them
control. It basically involved putting extraordinary pressure on
conservative Southern Democrats to switch parties or face the
toughest reelection battle they had ever seen. Historically,
Republicans tended to give a pass to them since they usually
voted together except — critically — on the vote to organize the
House at the beginning of each Congress. Newt’s Southern strategy
was extremely successful and the key to Republican ascendency.

Among the things Newt was able to do once he took control was
effectively neuter the committees. The committee chairmen's roles
were diminished, their staffs were slashed, and virtually all
power in terms of policy and legislative initiatives was
centralized in the speaker’s office. The only committee Newt had
any use for was the Rules Committee, which would often rewrite
legislation in the dead of night and bring it up for a vote the
next day. Consequently, members from both sides of the aisle had
no idea exactly what they were voting on, which made it easier to
hide earmarks and other special interest provisions from
scrutiny.

There’s no way Boehner can hope to get away with that sort of
thing. It’s clear that the Republicans in line to be committee
chairmen are not prepared to be potted plants. They are going to
reinvigorate the traditional committee system and make it once
again the pipeline through which legislation flows. And if
nothing else, the many Tea Party members expected to be elected
will want to see more legislative transparency and strongly
resist the sort of heavy-handed methods that were used to ram
legislation through during the Gingrich era.

Another important difference between 1994 and today is that
presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Democrats in
Congress had already done the heavy lifting of getting the federal
budget onto a sustainable path. In the 1990 and 1993 budget deals
— both enacted against the strenuous opposition of congressional
Republicans — taxes were raised and strong deficit controls put
in place that led naturally to surpluses so long as the budget
remained on auto-pilot, with no big new spending programs or tax
cuts. Under these circumstances, gridlock was just what the
doctor ordered.

It should be remembered also that Republicans had the very good
fortune to take power right on the brink of the 1990s technology
boom, which raised the real gross domestic product 4.7 percent in
1995, 5.7 percent in 1996 and 6.3 percent in 1997 — which
sent tax revenues cascading into the Treasury.

But today the situation is quite different. The economy is in the
tank and the budget is clearly on an unsustainable path, in large
part due to actions taken by Republicans when they were in power.
They completely dismantled the deficit controls put in place by
the elder Bush and Clinton so that they could cut taxes
willy-nilly without paying for them, and in the process
thoroughly decimated the government’s capacity to raise adequate
revenue to fund its essential functions. Adding insult to injury,
Republicans enacted a massive new entitlement program,
Medicare Part D, without paying for a penny of it on top of every
pork barrel project any Republican ever imagined.

The point is that gridlock under today’s circumstances will not
be benign, as it was in the late 1990s, but toxic, preventing our
political system from grappling with problems that demand action
and will only get worse the longer it is delayed.

Furthermore, in the 1990s there were still a few Republicans in
Congress like Sens. Bob Dole and Pete Domenici who put the
national interest above blind partisanship, and had long records
of supporting politically painful policies to get deficits under
control by both cutting spending and raising taxes. Today, I do
not see a single Republican anywhere with their stature and sense
of responsibility. Republicans now oppose deficits only in theory
and care more about defeating Obama in 2012 than rescuing the
nation from bankruptcy, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
recently admitted.

I hope I am wrong, but I don’t see any prospect of meaningful
action by a Republican Congress that would reduce the deficit,
and much reason to think it will get worse if they have their way
by enacting massive new tax cuts while protecting Medicare from cuts. And as I have
previously warned, I am very fearful that it
will be impossible to raise the debt limit, which would bring
about a default and real, honest-to-God bankruptcy — something
many Tea Party-types have openly called for in an insane belief that this will somehow or other
impose fiscal discipline on out-of-control government spending
without forcing them to vote either for spending cuts or tax
increases.

Some Republicans delude themselves that they can enact
legislation that will reduce the deficit on their terms — 100
percent spending cuts with no increase in taxes. In particular,
every Republican believes that the Affordable Care Act adds
massively to the deficit, despite repeated statements from the
Congressional Budget Office and Medicare’s actuaries to the contrary — which
means that repeal would be scored by CBO as adding to the
deficit.

In any case, repeal is impossible for two reasons. First,
President Obama would surely veto such legislation and
Republicans will not have anywhere close to the votes to
override. (That would require a two-thirds vote in both the House
and Senate.) Second, even if Democrats lose the Senate, they will
unquestionably have enough votes to filibuster whatever
Republicans hope to accomplish in this regard. (Republicans would
need 60 votes to block a filibuster.)

I think this second point is one Republicans really need to think
about in terms of their general political and legislative
strategy. They essentially wrote the book on how to frustrate the
will of the majority through petty obstructionism. Democrats in
the Senate need only follow the path Republicans have already
neatly laid out for them. Rather than negotiate with the Senate,
as the Founding Fathers clearly intended, I expect that the House
Republicans will insist on “my way or the highway” and delude
themselves that they can get a filibuster-proof majority and the
White House in 2012.

I believe that’s wishful thinking, but the Tea Party crowd is
nothing if not optimistic — even to the point of self-delusion.
But that still leaves the ordinary business of Congress to deal
with, such as passing routine appropriations bills to keep the
government operating and fund operations Republicans support,
such as paying for the wars they started during the George W.
Bush years. Although many Republicans believe they will benefit,
politically, from a government shutdown, I suspect that the
outcome will more likely be a replay of what happened in 1995 and
early 1996. As old Washington hand Stan Collender told me,
“Another government shutdown is a PR disaster waiting to happen.”

Republicans should savor the period from Election Day to the
first day of the new Congress on January 3, 2011. That will be as
good as it gets for them; afterwards, it’s all downhill once they
have to act, take responsibility, and can no longer blame
Democrats for everything bad that happens anywhere. That goes for
their allies in the business community, who naively assume that
every action of the last two years that they opposed will
magically disappear. And it goes double for the Tea Partiers, who
have never had to take responsibility for anything. It’s a whole
new ballgame in January.